

lUlien nrv: 

FOR YOUNG READ : ';■:•■ 



BY 




SHERWIN CODY 



WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPAN 



CHICAGO 



NEW YORK 



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BALDWIN'S BIOGRAPHICAL BOOKLETS 

THE STORY 

OF 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

FOR YOUNG READERS 

BY 

SHERWIN CODY 




WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 



• 



W0 «>0P| ES 




Baldwin's Biographical Booklet Series. 

Biographical Stories of Great Americans 
for Young Americans 

EDITED BY 

James Baldwin, Ph.D. 

IN these biographical stories the lives of great Americans are 
presented in such a manner as to hold the attention of the 
youngest reader. In lives like these the child finds the most 
inspiring examples of good citizenship and true patriotism,, 

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Four American Poets 

The Story of William Cullen Bryant 
The Story of Henry W. Longfellow 
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Copyright, 1899, by Werner School Book Company 



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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Love of Nature ..... 5 



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II. Bryant's Childhood ..... 10 

III. What the Boys did when Bryant was Young 15 

IV. The Young Poet . ... 19 
V. Thanatopsis ...... 24 

VI. Bryant Becomes a Lawyer . . . 29 

VII. A Literary Adventurer ... 33 

VIII. The Editor of a Great Newspaper . . 36 

I X. How Bryant Became Rich ... 42 

X. Bryant as an Orator and Prose Writer . 45 

XI. Other Events in Bryant's Life . . 50 

XII. Honors to the Great Poet . . . .57 

XIII. Learning to Love a Poet 61 



A 



A* _ -; f 




WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



BRYANT 



CHAPTER I 

THE LOVE OF NATURE 

Do you know what is meant by "the love of 
Nature"? Yes? But are you quite sure? Think 
a little. It is not an easy thing to understand, and 
many older people than you do not know what it 
means. 

Bryant was the great American poet of Nature. 
His poetry is best understood and enjoyed by 
those who have first learned to love Nature as 
he loved her. To all such it appears to be very 
simple and grand. 

In order that we may come by easy steps to a 
true appreciation of Bryant's poetry, let us take a 
lesson in the love of Nature. 

' ' Man made the city, God made the country, " 



is the old saving. Look at the long rows of city 
houses: how ugly they are! How dirty are the 
streets, from which on windy days clouds of dust 
sometimes rise and almost choke you as you walk 
along! Even the sky above is not often clear and 
blue as it ought to be, but it seems filthy with 
smoke and soot. And what sounds you hear! 
The noise of the cars as they buzz and jar 
along the street, the monotonous roar of human 
traffic, and the rough words of teamsters and 
hackmen as they try to crowd by one another 
— all these grate upon the sensitive ear. 

How different is everything in the country! 
What a clear, brilliant blue the sky is; and what a 
vast variety of color the surface of the earth 
presents! 

Here is the light, fresh green of the grass, 
and over there are the darker greens of the 
pines and cedars. In the autumn we observe 
the gorgeous hues of the maples and the 
oaks as their leaves change with the frost 
from green to crimson and gold. Think, too, of 
the flowers! Here are fields white with daisies, 



and there are other fields filled with yellow butter- 
cups or red clover blossoms! Farther away are 
fields of the graceful, slender-stalked wheat, or of 
the tall, rustling corn! 

Have you ever been in the woods in June? In- 
stead of the harsh sounds of the stre ts you 
hear the tumultuous but harmonious songs of 
birds ; instead of the steady roar of traffic, 
you hear the deep note of the wind through 
the trees, or the murmur of a little brook flowing 
over stones or dashing down a waterfall. All 
around you the trees rise, like columns in a cathe- 
dral, but more beautiful and majestic; and the air 
is filled with a sweet scent fit to be used for 
incense in the churches. *** 

Xow read what Brvant has to say in his "In- 
scription for the Entrance to a Wood." There are 
many hard words in it, and you must read very 
carefully and thoughtfully; but it will make you 
feel that on entering such a wood you are indeed 
going into God's own natural church, a place e 
more magnificent and wonderful than Solomon's 

mple: 



lc 



8 

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs 

No school of long experience, that the world 

Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 

Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares 

To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 

And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade 

Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze 

That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm 

To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here 

Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men, 

And made thee loathe thy life. The primal curse 

Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 

But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to guilt 

Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence these shades 

Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick roof 

Of green and stirring branches is alive 

And musical with birds, that sing and sport 

In wantonness of spirit ; while below, 

The squirrel, with raised paws and form erect, 

Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the shade 

Try their thin wings and dance in the warm beam 

That waked them into life. Even the green trees 

Partake the deep contentment ; as they bend 

To the soft winds, the sun from the blue sky 

Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 

Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems to enjoy 



Existence, than the winged plunderer 

That sticks its sweets. The mossy rocks themselves, 

And the old and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees 

That lead from knoll to knoll a causey rude 

Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark roots, 

With all their earth upon them, twisting high, 

Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet 

Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed 

Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, 

Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 

In its own being. Softly tread the marge, 

Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren 

That dips her bill in water. The cool wind 

That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee, 

Like one that loves thee, nor let thee pass 

Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace.* 

This is one of the hardest things in Bryant's 
poetry. When you can see all its beauties, and 
take pleasure in reading it, you will have learned 
to love both Nature and Nature's poet-priest. 



*To help in the mastery of this poem, the student is advised to make 
a careful list of all the natural objects mentioned in it, such as birds, 
brooks, trees, and flowers, and try to recollect having seen something 
of the same sort. 



IO 



CHAPTER II 



BRYANTS CHILDHOOD 



Bryant was the first great American poet, having 
been born fourteen years before Longfellow. Like 
Longfellow, he could trace his descent (on his 
mother's side) from John Alden and Priscilla Mul- 
lens, who came over in the Mayflower; and through 
two other branches he was descended from Pilgrim 
stock. The first Bryant in America did not come 
in the Mayflower > but he was in Plymouth in 1632, 
and was chosen town constable in 1663. 

The poet's father and grandfather were both 
doctors ; so when Dr. Peter Bryant was married to 
' < sweet Sallie Snell, " as the poet has it, and their 
second child was born, the good doctor named 
him William Cullen, after a great medical authority 
who had died four years before. This happy 
event — that is, the birth of William Cullen Bryant 
— occurred November 3, 1794, in the small town 
of Cummington, Massachusetts. But instead of 
growing up to be a doctor the boy became a poet, 
and his father was rather proud of the fact, too. 



II 

Cummington is a small town among the Berk- 
shire hills, in the western part of Massachusetts. 
The country around it is mountainous, with wide 
valleys which in the early days were very fertile. 
Bryant's grandfather, Snell, had come here in 
1774, just before the Revolution, with a handful of 
other settlers, to take up a homestead. There is a 
story that Eben Snell, Jr., an uncle of the poet, 
while working in the cornfield put his ear to the 
ground and heard the sounds of the distant battle 
of Bunker Hill. 

Little William Cullen was very quick and 
bright, though puny. In his autobiography he 
says he could go alone when he was but a year 
old, and knew all the letters of the alphabet 
four months later. His older brother, Austin, did 
even better than this, however; for he began to 
r read the Bible before he was three years old, and 
in just about a year from the time he began, he had 
read it all through, from Genesis to Revelation. 
William Cullen as a small child learned many of 
Watts's hymns, and used to recite them as he 
stood by his mother's knee. 



12 



It is probable that so much study was not good 
for him, for he suffered from terrible headaches, 
and was so puny his father and mother thought 
he would not live long. His head seemed to 
be too big for his body. There is a story that 
some medical students, who were studying in 
Dr. Bryant's office when William was a child, 
were ordered to give him a cold bath every morn- 
ing in a spring near the house. They kept this 
up so late in the fall that they had to break the 
first skim of ice on the top of the water. The 
treatment cured him, and after he was fourteen, 
he says, he never had a headache in his life. 

He began to go to school before he was four years 
old. It was not unnatural that a little fellow of 
that age should get sleepy during school hours. 
One day he woke from a sound nap to find him- 
self in his teacher's lap. When he realized where 
he was he became furiously angry at the thought 
that he should be treated so like a baby. 

About this time, too, he was kicked by a horse. 
A lady had come to call on his mother, and had 
tied her horse to a tree near the door. There were 



13 

fresh chips scattered about, and William and his 
elder brother amused themselves by throwing them 
at the horse's heels to make him caper. William 
got too near and at last the horse kicked him over. 
He soon recovered, and went to school with a 
bandaged head, but a scar from the wound on his 
head he carried to the day of his death. 

When he was five years old, the family went to 
live on Grandfather Snell's old homestead, where 
Dr. Peter Bryant remained as long as he lived. 
Years afterward, when the poet became rich, he 
bought this place for a country home. 

He began now to go regularly to the district 
school, where he learned reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, a little grammar and geography, and 
the Westminster Catechism. He was a fine 
speller, seldom missing a word, and he got on well 
in geography. The catechism, however, did not 
interest him and he could not understand it. 

Those were very strict Puritanic days. Says 
Bryant, in his autobiography: " One of the means 
of keeping boys in order was a little bundle of 
birchen rods, bound together with a small cord, 



14 

and generally suspended on a nail against the 
kitchen wall. This was esteemed as much a part 
of the necessary furniture as the crane that hung 
in the kitchen fireplace, or the shovel and tongs." 
And he tells us that sometimes the boy was sent 
out to cut the twigs with which he himself was to 
be whipped. 

Not only was whipping thought to be good for 
boys, but even grown-up people were whipped in 
public for petty crimes. 

About a mile from the Bryant home was a 
public whipping-post. Says the poet: "I remember 
seeing a young fellow, of about eighteen years of 
age, upon whose back, by direction of a justice of 
the peace, forty lashes had just been laid, as the 
punishment for a theft which he had committed. 
His eyes were red, like those of one who had been 
crying, and I well remember the feeling of curios- 
ity, mingled with pity and fear, with which I gazed 
on him." 

This was the last time the whipping-post was 
used in that neighborhood, but it stood there for 
several years longer. 



15 
CHAPTER III 

WHAT THE BOYS DID WHEN BRYANT WAS YOUNG 

Life in the time of Bryant's boyhood was rather 
hard and rough. New England country life was 
never easy. The chairs were very straight-backed, 
the beds were hard, and the food was not very 
delicate, though there was always plenty of it — 
plenty of pork and beans, if nothing else. For all 
that, the boys in Bryant's day had a very good 
time, which he tells about in the account of his 
early life to which we have already referred. 

Among the pleasant occurrences of those old- 
fashioned times were the neighborhood ' ' raisings. " 
When a man intended to build a house he got 
all the big, heavy timbers together for the frame, 
and then called in the neighbors to help him put 
them up. The minister always made a point of 
being present; and the young men thought it great 
sport, as did the boys, who could only look on. ' ' It 
was a spectacle for us," says Bryant, "next to that 
of a performer on the tight-rope, to see the young 
men walk steadily on the narrow footing of the 



i6 

beams at a great height from the ground, or as 
they stood to catch in their hands the wooden pins 
and the braces flung to them from below. Each 
tried to outdo the other in daring, and when the 
frame was all up, one of them would usually cap the 
climax by standing on his head on the ridge-pole. " 

Another good time was had at the maple sugar 
frolic. In spring, when the sap begins to come 
up in the maple trees, men go about, and bore two 
or three holes in every maple tree in a sugar 
camp. In these they stick little spigots with holes 
through them, and underneath they set a pail to 
catch the sap. Soon it begins to drop. When the 
pails are filled, the men bring fresh ones, and carry 
off the sap to an enormous iron kettle hung on a 
pole over a hot fire. 

''From my father's door," says Bryant, "in the 
latter part of March and the early part of April, 
we could see a dozen columns of smoke rising over 
the woods in different places, where the work was 
going on. After the sap had been collected and 
boiled for three or four days, the time came when 
the thickening liquid was made to pass into the 



i7 

form of sugar. This was when the syrup had be- 
come of such a consistency that it would feather — 
that is to say, when a beechen twig, formed at the 
small end into a little loop, dipped into the hot 
syrup and blown upon by the breath, sent into the 
air a light, feathery film." The syrup was then 
lifted off and poured into moulds, or else stirred 
rapidly until cooled, when it became delicious brown 
sugar in loose grains. The boys had a great deal 
of fun " trying" the syrup to see if it was ready to 
"sugar off." 

Then there were husking-bees and apple-parings 
and cider-making ; and in the winter all the young 
people went to singing school. 

Bryant in his boyhood was also fond of fishing 
for trout in the small streams, where there were 
plenty of fish to catch. Another sport was squirrel 
shooting. The young men would divide into two 
equal parties and see which party could shoot the 
most squirrels. 

Of course, in those days everybody went to 
church. Young Bryant began when he was only 
three years old. History does not say how he 



i8 

behaved, but there was not much chance to be 
naughty in church in those times. Every parish 
had its tithing man, whose business it was to 
maintain order in the church during divine serv- 
ice, and who sat with a stern countenance through 
the sermon, keeping a vigilant eye on the boys in 
distant pews and in the galleries. Sometimes 
when he detected two of them communicating 
with each other, he went to one of them, took him 
by the arm, and leading him away, seated him 
beside himself. He was also directed by law to see 
that the Sabbath was not profaned by people 
wandering in the fields or fishing in the brooks. 

When he was eight years old, young Cullen 
began to make poetry. His grandfather thought 
him rather bright at this, and a year or two later 
asked him to turn the first chapter of the Book 
of Job into verse. He did it all. Here are two 
sample lines : 

His" name was Job, evil he did eschew. 

To him were born seven sons ; three daughters, too. 

For this he received a ninepenny piece, though 
his father thought the lines rather bad. 



19 
CHAPTER IV 

THE YOUNG POET 

Bryant's poetic career began when he was twelve 
years old. Besides some "Enigmas" and a trans- 
lation from the Latin of Horace, he made a copy 
of verses to be recited at the close of the winter 
school, ' ' in the presence of the master, the minis- 
ter of the parish, and a number of private gentle- 
men." The verses were printed in the Hamp- 
shire Gazette, March 18, 1806, the year before 
Longfellow was born. This same newspaper 
had other contributions also from the pen of 
"C. B." 

Dr. Peter Bryant was something of a politician. 
He was several times a representative in the 
Massachusetts legislature, and finally a senator. 
He • belonged to the Federal party, which corre- 
sponds to the present Republican party. Jefferson 
was president, and in 1807 he laid an embargo on 
shipping. This stopped all commerce and brought 
on severe hard times, at which all the members of 
the party opposed to Jefferson were very indignant. 



20 



Dr. Bryant thought his young son might write a 
satirical poem about it. So ' ' The Embargo ; or, 
Sketches of the Times," was written and printed 
in a volume. There was a line on the title page 
saying the poem was written by ' ' a youth of thir- 
teen. " One of the great periodicals of that time, 
called the Anthology, reviewed the book, and while 
speaking well of it, said it seemed impossible that 
such a poem had been written by a "youth of 
thirteen." So when the first edition was sold and 
a second was printed the following year, young 
Bryant's friends prefixed an "Advertisement," as 
they called it — a paragraph in which they assured 
the public that the author was only thirteen, and 
there were plenty of people who would vouch for 
it. In this edition the name William Cullen 
Bryant was boldly printed. 

Of course this was not very good poetry. There 
is a story that years afterward some one asked 
Bryant if he had a copy of his first book, "The 
Embargo. " < < No, " said he. Afterward the friend 
who had asked him said he had found a copy in 
Boston. "I don't see how you can spend your 



21 

time with such rubbish, " said the poet, and turned 
away. 

During tne next few years he wrote other boyish 
and patriotic poems, some of which were printed 
in the Hampshire Gazette. One, written when he 
was sixteen, was entitled ' ' The Genius of Colum- 
bia"; another was, "An Ode for the Fourth of 
July, 1812." 

In 18 1 2 he entered the Sophomore Class in 
Williams College, where he remained only a year. 
There were only the president, one professor, and 
two tutors at Williams College in those days, and 
so Bryant's room-mate decided to go to Yale, 
where he could get a better education. Bryant 
thought he would go, too. He left Williams 
College and went home to prepare himself to pass 
the examinations for entrance to the Junior Class 
in Yale. 

During this summer, while he was studying at 
home, he often wandered about in the woods; and 
here he wrote " Thanatopsis. " At this time 
Bryant was a very meditative young man, fond of 
reading poetry, a fair Greek and Latin scholar, 



22 



and devotedly fond of the country and all its 

beauties. 

Just how or when he wrote << Thanatopsis" 
nobody ever knew. In the autumn his father 
decided that he could not afford to send him to 
Yale, as he was poor and had a large family. So 
the young man went away to study law. After he 
was gone, Dr. Bryant was looking over some 
papers in his desk, and found in one of the pigeon- 
holes some poems which his son Cullen had writ- 
ten. One of them was ' ' Thanatopsis. " He read 
it over, and thought it so good that he took it to a 
lady friend of his. 

"Here are some poems," said he, " which our 
Cullen has been writing. " 

She took them and began to read. When she 
had finished " Thanatopsis " she burst into tears* 
and Dr. Bryant found his eyes rather watery, too. 

At that time Dr. Bryant was a member of the 
senate in the Massachusetts legislature ; and so, 
going up to Boston, he took this and some other 
poems along. The North American Review was 
the great magazine in those days, and Dr. Bryant 



23 

knew slightly one of the editors, whose name was 
Phillips. He went to call on him, but not finding 
him at home left the package of manuscript with 
his own name on it. When Mr. Phillips came 
home he found it, and after reading the poems 
concluded that Dr. Bryant must have written 
" Thanatopsis, " while the other poems were by his 
son Cullen. But he regarded this poem as such a 
find that he hurried over to Cambridge to see his 
two fellow-editors and read them the wonderful 
lines. When he had finished, one of them, Richard 
H. Dana, himself a poet, said : 

"Oh, Phillips, you have been imposed on. 
There is no one in America who can write such 
a poem as that." 

"Ah, but I know the man who wrote it, "said 
Phillips. " He is in the senate." 

' ' Well, I must have a look at the man who 
wrote that poem," said Dana; and off he posted to 
Boston. He went to the state house, and to the 
senate chamber, and asked for Senator Bryant. 
A tall, gray-bearded old man was pointed out 
to him. Dana looked at him for a few minutes 



24 

and said to himself: "He has a fine head; but 
that man never wrote ' Thanatopsis. ' So without 
speaking to him he returned to Cambridge. 

The poem was printed in the North American 
Review. It was the first great poem ever pro- 
duced in America ; it was the work of a young 
man not eighteen years of age, and it has since 
been said to be the greatest poem ever written by 
one so young. 



CHAPTER V 



THANATOPSIS 

Every child at school becomes familiar with this 
grand poem, because it is in many of the higher 
readers. But that is not enough. You should 
learn to understand its meaning. As you read 
this poem, are you not reminded of the deep notes 
of a church organ, as the organist, left alone, 
plays some mighty fugue in preparation for the 
funeral of a great man? Thanatopsis (made up 
from two Greek words) means a view of death. 
The poem opens by calling to our minds the 



25 

grandeurs and the beauty of a cathedral-like 
wood, where Nature rules supreme. 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours she 
Has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware. 

We should hardly expect a young man of seven- 
teen to be meditating on death; but even very 
young people often think about it. 

When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart — 

These are the things we all think of when father 
or mother or brother or sister or young friend dies 
and is laid away in the earth. It is sad and ter- 
rible, and we cannot help weeping. At those times 



26 

strong men and women shed tears, and we do not 
think it strange. But, says Bryant,— 

Go forth tinder the open sky and list 
To Nature's teachings, while from all around — 
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air- 
Comes a still voice : Yet a few days, and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
. In all his course ; nor yet in the cold ground, 
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again; 
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
To mix forever with the elements, 
To be a brother to the insensible rock 
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
Shall send his roots abroad and pierce thy mould. 

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, 
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, 
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
All in one mighty sepulchre. 



2 7 

Being turned back to earth again does not seem 
so terrible when we think that all must have the 
same fate. There is a suggestion of grandeur 
in the thought that George Washington, King 
Solomon, Sir Isaac Newton, Napoleon — all lie in 
the same bed which Nature, the all-ruling, ever- 
lasting power, has provided. 

The hills, 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales, 
Stretching in pensive quietness between; 
The venerable woods, — rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man. 

When we reflect on how many have lived and 
died, the earth seems but one great tomb. There 
are said to be over 1,200,000,000 persons on the 
earth to-day. In a few years they will all have 
passed away, and others will have taken their 
places; and this change has been going on for thou- 
sands and thousands of years. In the graveyards 



28 

of any city will be found but a few hundred or at 
most a few thousand graves; yet hundreds of thou- 
sands of people have died there and been buried. 
Where are their graves ? Lost and forgotten. 

All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings 
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound 
Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there : 
And millions in those solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 
So shalt thou rest ; and what if thou withdraw 
In silence from the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe 
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
Of ages glides away, the sons of men, 
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes 
In the full strength of years, matron and maid, 



29 

The speechless babe, and the grey-headed man — 
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, 
By those who in their turn shall follow them. 

So live that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 



CHAPTER VI 



BRYANT BECOMES A LAWYER 

Always of a studious turn, always reading in 
his father's well-stocked library, or wandering 
through the woods and writing poetry, Bryant nat- 
urally tended towards some learned profession. 
He did not care to be a doctor; he would have 
liked to be a literary man, if such a career had 
then existed or been dreamed possible. As it was 
not, he finally decided to become a lawyer. 



3o 

A classmate who remembers him at this time 
describes him as singularly handsome and finely 
formed. He was tall and slender, and had a pro- 
lific growth of dark brown hair. He was also 
quick and dextrous in his movements, so much 
so that his younger brother sometimes boasted 
about his "stout brother," though he afterward 
learned that his strength was not so remarkable as 
his skill and alertness in the use of it. 

When his father's poverty compelled him to 
abandon college, he entered the law office of a Mr. 
Howe, of Worthington, a quiet little village four 
or five miles from Cummington. 

Bryant's friend and biographer, John Bigelow, 
says: "A young man's first year's study of the 
law commonly affects him like his first cigar or 
his first experience ' before the mast.' In other 
words, Bryant didn't like it at all. He was a con- 
scientious young man, and kept at the work; but 
he felt that he would almost as soon go out as a 
day laborer. In a letter he speaks of Worthington 
as consisting of "a blacksmith shop and a cow 
stable, " where his only entertainment was reading 



3i 

Irving s "Knickerbocker." Mr. Howe complained 
that he gave more time to Wordsworth's lyrical bal- 
lads than to Blackstone and Chitty, the great 
authorities on law, which he should have been 
studying. 

Young Bryant wanted to go to Boston to con- 
tinue his studies; but finally, as his father was too 
poor to support him in Boston, he went to Bridge- 
water, where his grandfather, Dr. Philip Bryant, 
lived. He liked this place better. He was poet for 
a Fourth of July celebration, and became inter- 
ested in politics. The War of 1812 was going on. 
Madison was President, and Bryant, in his letters 
to his friends, speaks of him as "His Imbecility." 
" His Imbecility " was warned that if he imposed 
any more taxes the people would revolt. 

At one time, Bryant thought of entering the 
militia for the defense of states' rights. It seems 
that he then advocated the policy of Massachu- 
setts seceding from the Union, as the Southern 
states afterwards did. 

His father actually got him a commission as 
adjutant in the Massachusetts militia, but the war 



32 

ended, and Bryant kept on with his law studies. 
That same year he came of age and was admitted 
to practice at the bar. 

He now went home and began to look about 
for a place where he could begin the practice of law. 
He decided on Plainfield, a small village four 
or five miles from Cummington. Plainfield had 
been the home of his father for a short time when 
the future poet was a child ; but it was a very 
small place, with not more than two hundred inhab- 
itants. 

He drudged here for a few months, earning 
quite a little money ; but he decided that the 
place was too small, and went to Great Barring- 
ton, where he had a chance to go into partnership 
with a lawyer already established, whose practice 
was worth $1,200 a year. 

Here he settled down to hard work, and here 
he remained as long as he continued to practice 
law. After the success of ' ' Thanatopsis, " he con- 
tributed various articles to the North American 
Review, and in it were published some of his most 
famous poems. He was chosen one of the tithing 



33 

men of the town, and soon afterwards town clerk, 
an office he held for five years. As town clerk he 
received a salary of five dollars a year. The gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts also made him Justice of 
the Peace. 

When Bryant was twenty-five years old his father 
died. This caused him great grief ; but about this 
time, great happiness came to him also. Soon 
after going to Great Barrington he had become 
acquainted with a Miss Fairchild, who was an 
orphan visiting in the neighborhood. He liked 
her, and the year after his father's death they were 
married. She was his devoted wife and friend 
for forty-five years, until she died. 



CHAPTER VII 



A LITERARY ADVENTURER 

Gradually Bryant had become known in the 
small literary circle that had sprung up around 
the North American Review, though his name was 
not known outside this small circle in Boston. He 



34 

had a great desire to become a literary man ; but 
he knew he must support his wife and family, and 
verse-making offered no money return. 

His friends, Richard H. Dana, Miss Cathe- 
rine Sedgwick, and one or two others, tried to 
persuade him to go to New York and engage in 
literature. Finally he made a visit to New York. 
A publishing firm there offered him two hundred 
dollars a year to write one hundred lines of poetry 
a month for them. He thought this might keep 
him from starvation. He went back to Great 
Barrington and stayed for some time longer, con- 
tributing to the United States Literary Gazette, 
for which Longfellow was then writing 

In 1825 he visited New York again, and was 
offered the editorship of a monthly periodical, the 
New York Review and Athenceum Magazine, which 
some publishers were proposing to start. His sal- 
ary was to be one thousand dollars a year. This 
offer he accepted, and he went to New York to 
live, leaving his wife and family in Great Barring- 
ton until he should find out whether he was going 
to succeed. He considered that if literature failed, 



35 

he could drudge at the law in New York as well as 
at Great Barrington. 

James Fenimore Cooper, who was now becom- 
ing a famous novelist, was a friend of Bryant's. 
So was William Ware, who wrote a novel based 
on the life of Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra, — a 
very famous book in its day and one still worth 
reading. Bryant worked very hard. He liked 
literature a great deal better than he did the law ; 
and though it was uncertain, he thought that for- 
tune would favor him in the end. The magazine 
he edited did not succeed very well, and at the 
end of a year was united with another one, the 
New York Literary Gazette. A few months later 
the United States Gazette in Boston was united with 
the magazine which Bryant was editing, under the 
title, United States Review and Literary Gazette. 
Bryant was allowed one quarter interest in 
the business and five hundred dollars a year 
salary. The five hundred dollars was probably 
all he got, and this sum was so small he could 
not make it support his family very well. If 
this magazine should succeed, he would get more 



36 

money; but it did not, and Bryant really thought 
he would have to quit literature for law once 
more. 

He was licensed to practice in New York; but 
just then fortune favored him : he was asked to 
to do some work on the New York Evening Post. 
The assistant editor had gone to Cuba, and 
finally died there. So Bryant was soon made the 
assistant editor, and was allowed an interest in the 
paper. 

At that time the paper was favorable to the 
federal party; but a few years later it became 
decidedly democratic in tone. So long as Mr. 
Bryant controlled it, it was an advocate of free 
trade and a bold champion of human liberty. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE EDITOR OF A GREAT NEWSPAPER 

Bryant's life work proved to be, not writing 
poetry, but editing a great New York daily paper. 
For many years he went to his office at seven 
o'clock every morning. He was never strong in 



37 

body, and he had to take very great care of 
his health. 

Every young reader should learn a useful 
lesson from him, although it is not easy to follow 
the rigorous mode of life he laid out for himself 
and followed to the end of his days. He himself 
tells in a letter what he did : 

"I rise early at this time of the year (March), 
about half-past five ; in summer, half an hour or 
even an hour earlier. Immediately, with very little 
encumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exer- 
cises, for the most part designed to expand the 
chest, and at the same time call into action all the 
muscles and articulations of the body. These are 
performed with dumb-bells, — the very lightest, 
covered with flannel, — with a pole, a horizontal 
bar, and a light chair swung around my head. 
After a full hour and sometimes more passed in 
this manner, I bathe from head to foot. When at 
my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my 
exercise in the chamber, and, going out, occupy 
myself in some work which requires brisk motion. 
After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit 



38 

down to my studies till I am called. My breakfast 
is a simple one — hominy and milk, or, in place of 
hominy, brown bread, or oatmeal, or wheaten grits, 
and, in season, baked sweet apples. Buckwheat 
cakes I do not decline, nor any other article of veg- 
etable food, but animal food I never take at break- 
fast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any time ; 
sometimes I take a cup of chocolate, which has no 
narcotic effect, and agrees with me very well. At 
breakfast I often take fruit, either in its natural 
state or freshly stewed. 

"After breakfast I occupy myself for a while 
with my studies, and, when in town, I walk down 
to the office of the Evening Post, nearly three 
miles distant, and after about three hours return, 
always walking. * * * In town, where I dine 
late, I take but two meals a day. Fruit makes a 
considerable part of my diet. My drink is water. 

"That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed 
early ; in town as early as ten ; in the country 
somewhat earlier. * * * I abominate drugs 
and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided 
anything which spurs nature to exertions which it 



39 

would not otherwise make. Even with my food I 
do not take the usual condiments, such as pepper 

and the like." 

A man who was so conscientious about eating 
and drinking and going to bed and getting up in 
the morning, was the kind of man who would be 
conscientious in editing a newspaper. In Bryant's 
early newspaper life a great daily paper was not so 
much a machine to gather news from every quarter 
of the globe and serve it up in a sensational style, as 
a medium for discussing public questions. Nowa- 
days, people often do not even look at the editorial 
column ; but in those days there was so little news 
they were obliged to read this. It was about the 
only fresh thing in the paper. Once a week, per- 
haps, a sailing vessel from Europe would come 
in with a bundle of European newspapers, from 
which the editor would clip and reprint a summary 
of foreign news. It took several days to get news 
from Washington to New York. Local items were 
generally sent in by friends of the editor. For 
years Bryant had but one assistant, and they two 
did all the reporting, editing, and editorial writing. 



4 o 

Reviews of books were sometimes done outside, 
and the shipping and financial news was furnished 
by a sort of City Press Association. It was Bry- 
ant's work to write a brilliant editorial or two every 
morning. Many of these were on politics, others 
on questions of local public interest. But Bryant 
tried always to be on the side of right and justice. 
For years the Post was regarded as the leading 
paper of the people, standing for the rights of the 
people. Many a time it fought the battles of the 
great public, and sometimes it won. 

A daily paper lasts but for a day; then it is dead 
and another takes its place. To know how com- 
pletely a daily paper dies when its day's work is 
done, so to speak, suppose you try to buy a copy 
three months old, or a year old. You remember 
three months ago there were hundreds of thousands 
of copies printed and distributed. You suppose 
that you can get a copy at the office of the paper, 
at any rate. But no; all more than three months 
old have been destroyed. 

In New York there was once a little old shop, 
kept by a queer old mulatto, known as ' ' Back 



4i 

Number Bud," who charged a dollar and a half 
for a one cent paper, less than a year old. This 
shop of ' ' Back Number Bud's " was, a few years 
ago, the only place in New York City where back 
numbers of newspapers could be purchased at any 
price ; and in smaller cities no copies whatever 
could be obtained, except by chance. 

A daily newspaper influences the people to-day, 
and then dies, and another paper takes its place. 
But if one man is making that paper every day for 
fifty years, at the end of fifty years, doing a little 
every day, he may have succeeded several times in 
completely revolutionizing public opinion. 

Besides Bryant, there were other great newspa- 
per editors in New York. One was Horace 
Greeley, whose name every child has heard. 
There were others, too. But none were so faith- 
ful as Bryant. For years his newspaper work took 
so much of his time that he wrote scarcely any 
poetry at all. But as those numbers of the Even- 
ing Post are dead and forgotten, we shall never 
know how much good he did during those years 
and years of faithful leadership. 



42 
CHAPTER IX 

HOW BRYANT BECAME RICH 

We have already seen that Bryant was born a 
poor country boy ; that his father was so poor he 
could not send his son to college more than a year; 
and that Bryant himself, when he first went to 
New York, worked for a time at a salary of only 
five hundred dollars a year. 

When he became assistant editor of the Evening 
Post, the editor-in-chief, William Coleman, who 
was also the chief proprietor, thought it would be 
well to give a small interest in the paper to one or 
two young men, so that when the older proprie- 
tors died others would be coming on to take their 
places. An eighth part was given to Bryant, who 
was to pay for it gradually from the money he 
could save. Another portion was offered to a 
friend of his, who decided not to take it. 

Three or four years later, when Mr. Coleman 
died, Bryant was made editor-in-chief, and bought 
a larger interest in the paper. He finally secured 
one half. The other half was owned for a time by 






43 

a Mr. Burnham, a practical printer. Later, one 
of Bryant's assistants, whose name was Leggett, 
owned a part interest. 

In those days newspapers were not such costly 
properties as they are to-day. Bryant always 
made a good living, but he regarded the work in 
which he was engaged as drudgery. 

After he had been in the newspaper work for 
some years, he wrote to his brother, who was a 
pioneer in Illinois, saying he thought of retiring 
from the Post, and asking what could be done in 
the West with four or five thousand dollars. His 
interest at this time was two fifths, so that he 
must have valued the paper at about twelve thou- 
sand dollars. 

About this time, while he was away from 
New York, his partner and assistant editor, Mr. 
Leggett, nearly ruined the paper. When Bryant 
returned he found that it was earning no money, 
and that he could not sell his interest at any price. 
He therefore set to work to win popularity for 
the paper once more. This he succeeded gradu- 
ally in doing, and during the next ten years there 



44 

was an average yearly profit of over $10,000, of 
which Bryant received a little less than half. In 
1850 the yearly profit was $16,000, and in i860 it 
was #70,000. If Bryant received $30,000 for his 
share of the profits of a year's business, he might 
be regarded as a rich man. After his death, the 
Evening Post was sold for $900,000, of which 

Bryant's share was half. 

During his later years he bought a great deal 
of land and many houses on Long Island, where 
he had a country home. He had another country 
home at Cummington, his grandfather's homestead, 
where he built a beautiful house. He also traveled 
a great deal, going to Europe many times, and to 
other parts of the world. 

Thus, by faithful, plodding work for many years 
Bryant, though a poet, became rich. He was del- 
icate and sympathetic, like all true poets, but he 
did not indulge in what some have supposed to be 
the poet's liberty to be reckless and careless. He 
worked faithfully and very diligently all his life; 
and in his old age he was well rewarded for all his 
labor. 



45 
CHAPTER X 

BRYANT AS AN ORATOR AND PROSE WRITER 

When Bryant went to New York it was a com- 
paratively small city. As years passed, it grew in 
size and wealth, and its newspapers became more 
important. We have seen how Bryant became 
rich by his ownership of the Evening Post. He 
also gained in honors. He was the editor of a 
great daily paper, and he was also a noted poet. 
His poems had been published both in this country 
and in London, and many thousands of copies were 
sold. Bryant was often asked to write poems for 
great celebrations, or in honor of well-known 
people. This he always refused to do. But he 
often made public addresses. When James Feni- 
more Cooper died, he acted, as it were, as the 
spokesman of the nation's grief. He pronounced 
the funeral eulogy upon Irving, and upon many 
noted people. He was not a great orator like 
Daniel Webster; but such speeches as these upon 
the lives of great men have seldom been surpassed. 

We must remember, too, that all his life Bryant, 



46 

in his editorials, was writing prose. From these 
editorials it would be easy to select some of the 
finest pieces of prose writing in our language. As 
most of them were on the passing events of the 
day, they have never been reprinted, — they have 
died with the newspaper. But here is a passage 
on the emancipation of the slaves which has the 
ring of true eloquence. 

President Lincoln had proposed gradual eman- 
cipation. 

"Gradual emancipation!" exclaims Bryant. 
" Have we not suffered enough from slavery with- 
out keeping it any longer? Has not blood enough 
been shed? My friends, if a child of yours were 
to fall into the fire, would you pull him out gradu- 
ally? If he were to swallow a dose of laudanum 
sufficient to cause speedy death, and a stomach 
pump were at hand, would you draw out the poison 
by degrees ? If your house were on fire, would 
you put it out piecemeal? And yet there are men 
who talk of gradual emancipation by force of 
ancient habit, and there are men in the slave 
states who make of slavery a sort of idol which 



47 

they are unwilling to part with; which, if it must 
be removed, they would prefer to see removed 
after a lapse of time and tender leave-takings. 

' ' Slavery is a foul and monstrous idol, a Jugger- 
naut under which thousands are crushed to death ; 
it is a Moloch for whom the children of the land 
pass through fire. Must we consent that the 
number of the victims shall be diminished gradu- 
ally? If there are a thousand victims this year, 
are you willing that nine hundred shall be sacri- 
ficed next year, and eight hundred the next, and 
so on until after the lapse of ten years it shall 
cease? No, my friends, let us hurl the grim image 
from its pedestal. Down with it to the ground! 
Dash it to fragments; trample it in the dust. 
Grind it to powder as the prophets of old com- 
manded that the graven images of the Hebrew 
idolaters should be ground, and in that state scatter 
it to the four winds and strew it upon the waters, 
that no human hand shall ever gather up the 
accursed atoms and mould them into an image to 
be worshiped again with human sacrifice. " 

This eloquent passage is taken from an editorial 



48 

in the Evening Post. The following is from a 
speech delivered at a dinner given to Professor 
Morse, the inventor of the telegraph : 

tl There is one view of this great invention which 
impresses me with awe. Beside me at this board, 
along with the illustrious man whom we are met to 
honor, and whose name will go down to the latest 
generations of civilized man, sits the gentleman to 
whose clear-sighted perseverance, and to whose 
energy — an energy which knew no discouragement, 
no weariness, no pause — we owe it that the tele- 
graph has been laid which connects the Old World 
with the New through the Atlantic Ocean. My 
imagination goes down to the chambers of the 
middle sea, to those vast depths where repose the 
mystic wire on beds of coral, among forests of 
tangle, or on the bottom of the dim blue gulfs, 
strewn with the bones of whales and sharks, 
skeletons of drowned men, and ribs and masts of 
foundered barks, laden with wedges of gold never 
to be coined, and pipes of the choicest vintages of 
earth never to be tasted. 

"Through these watery solitudes, among the 



49 

fountains of the great deep, the abode of per- 
petual silence, never visited by living human 
presence and beyond the sight of human eye, 
there are gliding to and fro, by night and by 
day, in light and in darkness, in calm and in 
tempest, currents of human thought borne by the 
electric pulse which obeys the bidding of man. 
That slender wire thrills with the hopes and fears 
of nations; it vibrates to every emotion that can be 
awakened by any event affecting the welfare of the 
human race. 

' ' A volume of contemporary history passes 
every hour of the day from one continent to 
another. An operator on the continent of Europe 
gently touches the keys of an instrument in his 
quiet room, a message is shot with the swiftness of 
light through the abysses of the sea, and before 
his hand is lifted from the machine the story of 
revolts and revolutions, of monarchs dethroned and 
new dynasties set up in their place, of battles and 
conquests and treaties of peace, of great statesmen 
fallen in death, lights of the world gone out and 
new luminaries glimmering on the horizon, is writ- 



5° 

ten down in another quiet room on the other side 
of the globe. 

"Mr. President, I see in the circumstances 
which I have enumerated a new proof of the 
superiority of mind to matter, of the independent 
existence of that part of our nature which we call 
the spirit, when it can thus subdue, enslave, and 
educate the subtilest, the most active, and in 
certain of its manifestations the most intractable 
and terrible, of the elements, making it in our 
hands the vehicle of thought, and compelling it to 
speak every language of the civilized world. I infer 
the capacity of the spirit for a separate state of 
being, its indestructible essence and its noble 
destiny, and I thank the great discoverer whom we 
have assembled to honor for this confirmation of 
my faith." __ 

CHAPTER XI 

OTHER EVENTS IN BRYANT'S LIFE 

Among the remaining important events of the 
poet's life, we must first speak of the publica- 
tion of his poems. In 1822, the year after his 



5i 

marriage and while he was trying to practice law at 
Great Barrington, he was invited to deliver the usual 
poetical address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society 
of Harvard College. For this occasion he wrote 
the poem of ' ' The Ages, " with which his collected 
works now open. This poem secured him so 
much reputation that he published a very small 
volume of his works. There were but forty-four 
pages, but in that small space were printed some 
of the finest poems Bryant ever wrote. The 
copies did not sell very rapidly, and Bryant's profit 
was not large. When he was old and famous, a 
young man said to him, "I have just bought a 
copy of the first volume of your poems. I paid 
twenty dollars for it. " 

"Hm ! " said Bryant. "A good deal more 
than I got for writing it! " 

Of his other poems, a large number were writ- 
ten for the United States Literary Gazette, and 
the various magazines he edited in New York. 
When he became editor of the Evening Post he 
continued to edit the United States Review and 
Literary Gazette, until it was discontinued. After 



52 

that he assisted in editing an annual called The 
Talisman, which appeared regularly until 1829. 
To this he contributed a considerable number of 
poems. But now for several years he wrote but 
little poetry, giving all his time and energy to the 
newspaper. 

In 1 83 1, however, he published a second collec- 
tion of his poems. There were eighty in the 
volume. Then he thought he would see how 
they would be received in England. He had a 
friend who knew Washington Irving. Irving was 
a famous writer at this time, and his publisher was 
John Murray, one of the greatest of English pub- 
lishers. Bryant obtained an introduction to Irving 
by letter, and asked him to assist in getting Mur- 
ray to bring out a London edition of his poems. 
Murray would not do it, however. But Irving 
admired Bryant's work, and after a time he found 
another publisher who was willing to bring out the 
volume. He himself wrote an introduction, and 
dedicated the book to Rogers, the fashionable poet 
of England at that time. But before the book 
came out the publisher, a fussy old man, came to 



53 

Irving and said it would never do to print in Eng- 
land the line, 

And the British foe man trembles. 
That would be sure to offend the stolid Briton's 
pride. So Irving changed the line to 

The foeman trembles in his camp. 

Years afterward there was some controversy over 
this change on the part of Irving ; but Irving and 
Bryant always remained good friends. 

Other volumes of his collected poems were pub- 
lished from time to time after this ; but they are 
not important. The only other great poetic work 
that Bryant attempted was his translation of Ho- 
mer's Iliad and Odyssey. When he translated these 
grand Greek poems into English blank verse he was 
already quite an old man. His wife had died, and 
he wished some regular work, aside from his paper, 
that would claim his thoughts. So he made it a 
practice to translate a few lines every day. This 
he kept up for a number of years, until he had 
translated the whole of both these long poems. 

For this he probably received more money than 



54 

for all his other poems put together — over seven- 
teen thousand dollars in all. 

We must next speak of his travels ; for Bryant 
was a great traveler. His first long journey was 
made in 1832 to visit his brothers, who had become 
the proprietors of a large landed estate in Illinois. 
He was three weeks on the journey out. While 
crossing the prairies between the Mississippi River 
and his brothers' plantation he met a company 
of Illinois volunteers, who were going to take 
part in the Black Hawk War. They were led by 
a tall, awkward, uncouth lad, whose appearance 
attracted Bryant's attention, and whose conversa- 
tion pleased him, it was so breezy and original. 
He learned many years afterward that this captain 
was Abraham Lincoln. When in i860 it was pro- 
posed to nominate Lincoln for President, Lincoln 
came to New York to speak, and Bryant intro- 
duced him to the audience. 

It was during his visit to his brothers that he 
wrote of 

The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 
For which the speech of England has no name. 



55 

He evidently liked the West, for we have seen that 
later he proposed to sell out his paper and go there 

to live. 

In 1834 he made his first trip to Europe. While 
he was gone he wrote letters regularly for his 
paper ; but he traveled leisurely and enjoyed him- 
self. He took his wife and daughters with him. 
He remained two years, when he was called home 
by the illness of the associate editor, who had 
charge of the paper in his absence. 

After this, at various times, he visited Europe 
again, crossing the Atlantic in all six times. One 
of these journeys, made in 1857, was chiefly for 
Mrs. Bryant's health. They landed at Havre, and 
journeyed through Belgium and Holland, France 
and Spain to Madrid, whence they crossed to 
Naples, where Mrs. Bryant was ill for four months. 
She recovered somewhat, but when at last they 
returned to the United States she was not much 
better. Bryant had bought the old homestead 
at Cummington, and had invited all his relatives 
from Illinois to join him in ' ' hanging the pot. " In 
July, 1858, he had to notify his brothers, some of 



56 

whom were already at Cummington, that his wife 
was too ill to go there ; and on the 27th of that 
month she died. In regard to her death he wrote 
to a friend, ' ' I lived with my wife forty-five years, 
and now that great blessing of my life is with- 
drawn, and I am like one cast out of paradise and 
wandering in a strange world. " 

Nearly ten years before this, in 1849, he made a 
visit of two months to Cuba, going by way of 
the Carolinas and Florida. He was ' ' received 
by the governor-general of Havana, and passed 
several days on a coffee estate at Matanzas, 
going then by rail to San Antonio in a car built at 
Newark, drawn by an engine made in New York, 
and worked by an American engineer. He 
breakfasted at the inn of La Punta on rice 
and fresh eggs and a dish of meat. He witnessed 
a cock-fight, a masked ball, a murderer garroted, 
and slavery in some of its most inhuman 
phases." 

He also visited Mexico, Egypt, and the Shet- 
land Islands, and was everywhere an interested 
observer of men and manners, 



57 
CHAPTER XII 

HONORS TO THE GREAT POET 

We have seen that Bryant was not only a great 
poet, but a great newspaper editor, an eloquent 
orator, and a rich man. So he came to be a 
noted public character, one of the leading citizens 
of the great city of New York. From this time 
forward until his death in extreme old age, prom- 
inent statesmen, politicians, poets, people of soci- 
ety, hastened to shower honors upon him. He 
was asked to be a regent of the University of 
New York, but declined. Banquets were also 
tendered him, which he also declined. But on 
his seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, the 
Century Club of New York, of which he had been 
one of the founders, resolved to make a great fes- 
tival in his honor. Bancroft, the historian, was 
president of the club, and greeted Bryant with a 
graceful speech on that great occasion. In Bry- 
ant's reply is the following passage, which will be 
of interest to all young people as showing that 
this great and wise man believed in placing 






58 

responsibility on the young, and not in keeping 
them in the background for wise old heads. 

' ' Much has been said of the wisdom of Old 
Age, " said he. ' ' Old Age is wise, I grant, for it- 
self, but not wise for the community. It is wise 
in declining new enterprises, for it has not the 
power nor the time to execute them ; wise in 
shirking from difficulty, for it has not the strength 
to overcome it ; wise in avoiding danger, for it 
lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by 
which dangers are parried and converted into 
advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind 
at large, by whom new enterprises must be under- 
taken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted. 
What a world this would be if it were made up 
of old men ! " 

Oliver Wendell Holmes was there, and read a 
beautiful poem composed for the occasion. There 
were also other poems read by their authors, 
and Whittier and Lowell, who could not be there, 
sent their poems to be read, while Longfellow and 
a great many other famous people wrote letters of 
congratulation. 



59 

Here are some of the beautiful lines from the 
poem which Dr. Holmes read : 

How can we praise the verse whose music flows 
With solemn cadence and majestic close, 
Pure as the dew that filters through the rose? 

How shall we thank him that in evil days 
He faltered never, — nor for blame nor praise, 
Nor hire nor party, shared his earlier days ? 

But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, 
So to his youth his manty years were true, 
All dyed in royal purple through and through. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was there, and made a 
speech, which he closed with this verse, written by 
the poet Crabbe : 

True bard, and simple as the race 
Of heaven-born poets always are, 

When stooping from their starry place 
They're children near but gods afar. 

This means that great poets seem very great and 
magnificent when we think of them after they are 
dead and gone, or when they live by themselves 



6o 

at a great distance ; but really, when you know 
them, they are as natural and human as children. 
That perfectly describes William Cullen Bryant. 

In 1874 Bryant was elected an honorary member 
of the Russian Academy of St. Petersburg. The 
same year, on his eightieth birthday, he was pre- 
sented with an address of honor, signed by thou- 
sands and thousands of people. This was accom- 
panied by a special vase, completed sometime 
afterward, which commemorated his literary 
career. A little later in the same year he visited 
Governor Tilden at Albany, and was tendered a 
public reception. After that some of his friends 
proposed that he should be nominated as one of 
the electors on the Tilden electoral ticket, when 
Tilden was a candidate for the presidency of the 
United States. 

These and many other public honors were 
heaped upon him in his old age. When over 
eighty-three years of age he was invited to deliver 
an address on the unveiling of a statue of Maz- 
zini, the Italian patriot, in Central Park, New 
York City. After it was over, he was very much 



6i 



exhausted, but walked across the park to the house 
of a friend. On the steps he fell, being old and 
feeble and very tired. His head hit on a stone and 
he fainted away. Less than two weeks later, 
June 12, 1878, he died from the effects of this fall. 



CHAPTER XIII 



LEARNING TO LOVE A POET 

It is not uncommon to hear young people say, 
" I don't like poetry at all. It is dry, horrid stuff, 
and I don't understand it." No doubt some of 
you will say or think this about Bryant's poetry. 
It is true that he used a great many long, hard 
words; and his poems are sometimes rather solemn. 
What is more, they are not musical like Longfellow's. 
It is said that Bryant had no ear for music. For 
this reason you cannot read his poetry as you do 
Longfellow's, swinging along from line to line. 
Young people who read in the sing-song style will 
find that they cannot do, that when they come to 
Bryant. At first you may think his poetry is, for 
this reason, not good poetry at all. Perhaps it 



62 

would be better to call Bryant a prose poet instead 
of a musical poet. But when you get used to his 
prose-like poetry, you will like it if you have in 
you the least love of nature or natural beauty. 

Take some one poem that you like and read it 
over and over again, until you have it almost if not 
quite by heart — for instance, that beautiful poem, 
' ' The Death of the Flowers, " written on the occa- 
sion of his sister's death : 

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the 

year, 
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown 

and sere. 
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves 

lie dead; 
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's 

tread. 
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs 

the jay, 
And from the wood- top calls the crow through all the 

gloomy day. 

Other poems that are well worth reading many 
times, until you really understand and love them, 
are ' ' The Waterfowl, " ' ' Autumn Woods, " ■ ' No- 



63 

vember, " "The Gladness of Nature," "The 
Past," "To the Fringed Gentian," "The Con- 
queror's Grave," "An Invitation to the Country," 
"The Wind and the Stream," "The Poet," 
"May Evening," "The Flood of Years," and 
' ' Our Fellow-Worshipers. " To have mastered 
one of these poems is better than to have read the 
whole of Bryant carelessly. Take one, and read 
it until by very force of habit you learn to love it; 
and then the next poem you take up will reveal 
beauties which you never suspected when you 
first read it. 

There is also a city poem of Bryant's, "The 
Crowded Street, " well worth learning to love : 

Let me move slowly through the street, 

Filled with an ever-shifting train, 
Amid the sound of steps that beat 

The murmuring walks like autumn rain. 

How fast the flitting figures come! 

The mild, the fierce, the stony face ; 
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some 

Where secret tears have left their trace. 

And here is one more short poem, which may you 



64 

all remember, long after you have forgotten that 
you ever read this little history of the poet's life ! 

THE DEATH OF LINCOLN. 

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, 

Gentle and merciful and just! 
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 

The sword of power, a nation's trust! 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 

Amid the awe that hushes all, 
And speak the anguish of a land 

That shook with horror at thy fall. 

Thy task is done ; the bond are free : 
We bear thee to an honored grave, 

Whose proudest monument shall be 
The broken fetters of the slave. 

Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 

Hath placed thee with the sons of light, 

Among the noblest host of those 
Who perished in the cause of Right. 



"four Great 



James Baldwin, Ph. D. 



Americans" Series... 



For Young American Readers. 

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VOLUMES NOW READY! 

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GEORGE WASHINGTON, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 
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IL Four American Patriots 

PATRICK HENRY, ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 
ANDREW JACKSON, ULYSSES S. GRANT. 
By Alma Holman Burton, 

Author of ** The Story of Our Country." 

Cloth. 256 Pages. . . . Price, 50 Cents. 



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THE WERNER PRIMER 

Exquisitely Illustrated in Colors. 
H2 Pages. Price 30 Cents. 

H^HE Werner Primer is a growth. It is based on the 
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This famous book has accomplished two results: 

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First Year Nature Reader* 

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p nr (ZfnrJf>Q T nnrl TT By Katherine Beebe 

- rc,r UrdUCb 1 ctnU 11. and Nellie F. Kingsley 

J54 Pages. Price 35 Cents. 

r I ^HIS is a remarkably interesting book for children. 
"*■ It is designed to be taken up after the Werner 
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The study of Nature is always attractive to the child, 
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A valuable feature of the book is a list of appropriate 
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44 ideal First Reader." 



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O? O? vl? 

For Grades IV and V. mara l. pratt 

\ 28 Pages. Price 30 Cents. 

TN contrast with the old, classic tales and the lessons 
-*- from Nature are these poetic legends of Indian life. 
Children delight in beautiful stories like these, which 
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The literary style of the author is picturesque and 
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the pleasing character of the writings: 

"Many years ago, when this country of ours was one great forest, 
* * * there dwelt a race of happy little children. The Red Children, 
we call them * * * Some wise men, who loved the Red Children and 
saw the sweetness of their simple stories, gathered them together and 
told them in a book, so that you and I might read these legends of the 
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The little book is attractively bound and illustrated.. 
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rot Grades V and VI. "alma ho man burton 

240 Pages. Price 60 Cents. 

r I ^HIS is a unique and charming work, which not only 
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in the wilderness down to the national prosperity of to- 
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So skillfully is our country's growth depicted that the 
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The captivating and picturesque style in which it is writ- 
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The illustrations are numerous, and are much more 
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For Higher Grades. matthew arnold 

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and abundant notes, have been prepared by Merwin 
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This poem has been selected as one of the English 
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afayette, 



The 






THE BOOK OF 
THE HOUR for 
THE YOUTH 
OF AMERICA.. 

** Just 

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Jirienclotjtmerican eCiberty 

Ohe proposal to erect a monument in Paris to the 
early friend of American liberty, GENERAL 
LAFAYETTE, by contributions from the patriotic 
school children of the United States, has aroused 
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In view of the great interest which this 
fitting- and significant movement has awakened in 
the life, character and services of the heroic soldier 
and patriot, the Werner School Book Company has 
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"LAFAYETTE, 

THE FRIEND OF AMERICAN LIBERTY," 

By Mrs. ALMA HOLMAN BURTON, 

The author of ** Four American Patriots/' 

** The Story of Our Country/' Etc. 

A TIMELY CONTRIBUTION OF GREAT VALUE 
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The Werner Arithmetic. Book III. (Hall) 50 

Giffin's Grammar School Algebra 50 

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The Story of Benjamin Franklin (Baldwin) 10 

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Baldwin's Primary Lessons in Physiology 35 

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Hinsdale's Studies in Education 1 00 

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Hinsdale's Training for Citizenship 10 

Hinsdale's History and Civil Government of Ohio 1 00 

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Old Time Stories Betold (Smythe) 30 

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